Damage
by enRAGEd
Summary: Throw a stone into a pond. The ripples grow still, given time. But the stone remains. The pond has changed, forever. And there's no going back. A tribute to the theme of trauma in the Resident Evil games. Part 6: Billy. Critique appreciated.
1. Jill: By Night, It Comes

Barry was taking care of everything.

The whole journey, by chopper, by Land Rover, she'd sat in silence beside him, wondering how much she should trust him. After what had happened at Arklay, after what had happened with Wesker, how could she?

She didn't have a choice. There was nothing left. Every step she took was an effort, every thought an uphill struggle. She couldn't even speak. She was useless now. With sleep, with medicine, with _time_, she'd recover. She hoped.

Until then, Barry was taking care of everything.

Right now, he was paying for hotel suites, one for each of them. She limped upstairs, his jacket draped over her shoulders. It was the lightest burden she'd carried in two weeks. Her bloodied face still drew too much attention.

Carlos didn't speak. He took his key and left her at the door to her room. His mind was elsewhere.

She ignored the bedroom. Later for that. The bathroom first. Typical hotel luxury. Ceramics and stone, all polished to gleaming. Spotlights giving out off-white illumination. Just orange enough to be warm without being garish. Wide mirror. Large basin. All of it wasted on her.

She staggered to the sink and threw the medkit down beside it. She could see the smear of blood her hand had left on the wall behind her. And she could see herself. The cut on her swollen lower lip. The black eye. The thick track of blood in her hairline, gummed shut with dirt and dark hair. Skin stained black by smoke, oil, grease. Blood.

She looked like hell.

She pulled her right arm out of Barry's jacket and let it slide off her left. Something felt broken. The joint was stiff to the point of paralysis. She was afraid of what she'd find when she reached skin. The patch of dried gore on the shoulder of her shirt had been there since the monster had wounded her. She needed to see the wound for herself.

She unbuckled her harness. Or tried, at least. The clips snagged. Her fingers felt swollen. Tactless. She yanked it up over her head, one-armed. It caught around her neck and rubbed the skin raw. She swore and grunted and whimpered until it came loose. Then she threw it across the room.

She picked at the lace of her flak vest, trying to work up enough slack to wriggle out. Her broken nails snapped and bent as she tried to work them between the strings. A couple of inches was all she could manage.

She pulled the armour up. It caught around her bust and crushed the air out of her lungs. She breathed a lungful of sweat and rot in the musty confines of the jacket, and then kept pushing. It came loose. The relief was enough to make her cry out.

She dropped it on the floor and collapsed over the basin, spitting bile into the sink. Strings of slime clung to her lips and teeth, sticking no matter how hard she tried to shake them loose. A revolted shiver rattled through her body. She wiped them away on the back of her wrist.

She was exhausted already. So much for being in peak condition.

She looked up into her reflection. Through the dirt and blood and matted hair, there was fire in those eyes. She'd survived the city. She'd survived Umbrella. Its assassins. Its monsters. This was supposed to be the easy part.

Why wasn't it easy?

Her throat was raw. She couldn't remember the last time water had touched her lips. She screwed open the faucet and ducked her head under, drinking deep. Every gulp made her throat spasm with pain, but the cold soothed.

She didn't even try to unbutton the shirt. She balled her fists in fabric and pulled. Plastic poppers bounced off the mirror. One rolled into the basin, circled the drain and then vanished into the hole.

Blood was seeping through the gauze pad taped to her collarbone. She had Nicholai to thank for that. She'd need to change the dressing. But that wasn't her priority just now.

She shrugged off the shirt. The fabric had turned to cardboard with dirt and gore long dried. She wouldn't be putting it back on again.

The wound was worse than she remembered. Now it was a black crater at the top of her arm. Every time she moved, the skin creased and cracked. Filth from the injury was smeared the length of her arm. And it _itched_. God it itched.

Her nail grazed the skin. The grotesque sore swelled to meet it. A searing tingle spread across her shoulder, provoked by the touch. She raked her finger across the burn. The flesh split. Blood spilled down her arm.

The pain made her tremble. Her teeth snapped together, catching the tip of her tongue. Iron flooded her mouth.

And still it itched.

She slapped her palm against the wound. Black flesh cracked. The scar burst. Gore ran like a river. This time, the pain drove her to her knees. But at least it stopped the itch.

She needed to wash. She needed to get the blood off.

Her legs trembled whenever she put weight on them. Still she kicked herself along the floor, towards the shower cubicle. She pushed open the door and dragged herself over the threshold. She clawed for the tap, painting everything she touched crimson.

The water came, cold and painful. Then warm. The pain lessened. Hot at last. A different kind of pain. Her skin turned pink. Pollution ran off her in a mudslide and swirled into the drain. She hugged her knees and let the rain wash over her.

She massaged her fingers into her shoulder. Dead skin sloughed away. Beneath was raw, red, new flesh. The hole had screwed shut, leaving only a puckered crease at the top of her arm. It hurt, but she had to get it clean.

With the first strength that came, she kicked her boots off and wriggled out of her combats. They lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the cubicle, bleeding dirt. She stood, clutching at the polished fittings to hold herself upright. Her muscles were burning. Screaming. But the heat eased the ache.

She tilted her face into the downpour. Her hair, in its muddied clumps, split apart, slithering back behind her ears.

The grimace she had been wearing for the last few hours, maybe even days, slackened. Something else took hold. She started to smile. A laugh bubbled up inside her and popped from her mouth. Hot water splashed on her tongue. It felt good. She gargled and giggled, enjoying the moment.

_I'm out. I'm really out. I made it. _We _made it._

She didn't know how it was even possible. But she was out.

And then her smile faltered. The _world_ faltered. Every drop of water seemed to freeze in the air. Her heart stopped in her chest with one final, deafening beat. Someone, somewhere screamed.

It took her a moment to realise that it was her.

Pain speared through her, as though something in her gut had ripped. Her legs turned to rubber again. They folded and dropped her with a splash onto her knees. Her hands clamped around her stomach. Her fingers curled, clawing at the skin, drawing blood.

The water hammered down on her back, forgotten.

_What's happening? What's happening to me?_

She tried to breathe. A gasp was all she could manage. The pain had closed around her lungs like a fist, crushing the life out of her. She choked. Spluttered. Sucked oxygen. The grip wouldn't loosen.

Something moved under her hands. She recoiled like she'd been stung. And that was when she saw her hands.

The veins on their backs had turned to fat, black cables beneath her flesh. She traced them up her arm, to where the bulging vessels spread like roots from the scar. They pulsed, fit to burst.

"Oh _God!_"

She wrenched back the shower door and crawled to the basin. It was an effort just to stop herself curling up around the agony in her belly and lying on the bathroom floor. She dragged herself up, confronting her reflection.

The broken, battered her of mere minutes ago was gone. Now her teeth were bared in a snarl. Her hair hung down in front of her face, wild. The black lines seized her neck. Swelling. Tightening. Constricting.

She watched as they reached out over her face, creeping from beneath her hairline, stretching across her cheeks. They swarmed around her mouth, her nose, the corners of her eyes. She grunted, a scream strangled into silence by a throat twisted shut.

But she found her voice when the thing inside her turned her eyes black. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

And screamed.

Her eyes snapped open. Warm darkness swallowed her. She couldn't move. Something was smothering her. Suffocating her. She kicked out, her legs snaring in whatever was clinging to her body. It held tight, bunching at her calves, tangling around her fists as she hammered at it.

A hand wrapped around her forearm and jerked her upwards, out of the membranous sac as it closed around her. The grip was strong, the skin rough, but gentle. It comforted her, the familiarity of that hand.

She let it bear her upwards. An arm curled around her back, holding her tight to a muscular chest. The hand released her and found her head, pressing her to a body that smelled and felt like home. She crushed her face to it, a shuddering cry rushing past her lips, half a sob and half a scream.

A voice breathed loving words into her ear. Lips kissed her crown through her hair. All she could do was cling like a drowning woman to the body of her saviour as nightmare and reality found their rightful places.

The duvet she'd been fighting with slipped away. Chris kept holding her until she stopped trembling, until the rush of adrenaline and terror and confusion had subsided.

"You okay?"

She nodded, blinking tears out of her eyes. "Just give me a minute."

-x-x-x-x-x-


	2. Claire: Silver Bullets

The foyer of the Armstrong building was a study in functional aesthetics. It was modern and clinical elegance for an era where luxury was commonplace. Frontage of polished glass and steel. Desk of veneered mahogany. Black marble floor with the company logo laid out in mosaic at its centre.

Claire's fingers tightened around the strap of her messenger bag as she crossed the chamber, boots thumping out an echo.

The woman behind the desk glanced up and smiled at her. Affected, just like the grandeur of their building.

"I've got a package for Gregory Baker."

She tapped a pen on the book in front of her. More smiling. Pristine pearls between two perfect slivers of rouge. So much effort to convey such an imperfect emotion. "If you'd just like to sign the guest register, I'll have someone take you right up."

Claire nodded, scrawled a half-assed "J. Anderson" under "Name" and checked her watch for the time.

The guard hurried over a moment later. Umbrella's rent-a-cops came in two sizes: Delta Force wannabes who tucked their pants into their boots, and tired old men whose bodies were going to seed. The latter was more likely to have combat experience. This guy looked like the former.

"Right this way, ma'am," he said. He may as well have stood to attention and snapped off a salute.

They stood side-by-side in the elevator, tolerating the muzack because he didn't have anything to say and nothing she said would make her any friends. She wouldn't have come anywhere near a place like this on her downtime, but she had a job to do. She'd come to the realisation a long time ago that Umbrella was everywhere, and no one was going to make them go away for her. She just had to deal with it in her own way.

He took the lead, one hand on his gun, the other on his radio. He nodded a greeting to the woman at the second desk, like a superhero on patrol. She didn't look impressed.

Claire followed, past an open plan office filled with typists. This building handled a lot of the company's administration for the east coast and various properties off the mainland. Nothing sensitive, but a lot of data flowed through here daily. She had to wonder what she'd find if she just sat down and started browsing.

Baker worked in an office off the central office, with a small team of technicians at his disposal. He'd arranged the place like a schoolroom. Three rows of desks, all facing the wall, with teacher perched, predatory, behind, just waiting for a lapse in concentration or a website that went against company usage policy to show up on their screens.

She didn't need the guard to march up to his desk to spot the man himself.

She took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. All the dozens of things that could go wrong. She just had to hope she was luckier than that.

_No going back now._

Her hand slipped into her jacket and found the Browning Hi-Power strapped under her arm. Her escort only had enough time to widen his eyes before two bullets to the chest sent him slamming into the wall. He let out a grunt and sagged, sliding to the ground and painting a crimson streak with his back.

She tried not to look at it.

She snapped the lock shut on the door and yanked the cord for the blinds. "Everyone in the corner. Now!"

There wasn't a lot of time. The security team were on hand to deal with troublemakers, not terrorists. Protocol was to call in the big guns for situations like this. That gave her a grace period of about twenty minutes before the U.S.F got here. Twenty minutes at best.

Her new roommates huddled down in the corner by Baker's desk. All except Baker, who was just standing, staring at her.

"Sit down," she said, marching across the room.

His legs gave out with a convulsive jerk. The others were crying or comforting one another. Some of them were looking up at her like they were about to start begging.

_Please, God, don't let them start begging._

She stopped next to Baker's desk and slid a flash drive into the port on the front.

"I want it all. Names, addresses, phone numbers. A list of _all_ offshore assets. _Now._"

"The system will send out a warning to Head Office if I do that."

He was objecting while complying. She liked that.

"I think that's the least of your worries right now."

The bar started it's slow crawl across the screen.

_Come on. Come _on_. No time. Need to move._

"Why are you doing this?" Baker asked.

"Shut up," she snarled. She wasn't in the mood for arguing ethics with people who worked for _Umbrella_.

He wasn't paying attention. Too busy trying to get in her head like some kind of hostage negotiator. Star of his own personal action movie. "Listen. I know that what you've been through must have been terrible..."

She blanched.

_He knows. He_ knows _what they do._

"But this isn't going to help anything..."

She could feel her jaw locking behind her lips, her teeth grinding into one another. Her grip tightened on the Browning, her favourite since...

_Since Raccoon._

"Shut up."

Her eyes were starting to burn. One more push and the tears would be loose, streaming down her face. He could see them. She knew he could. That's why he was standing up. That's why his hands were reaching out to take the gun.

_Don't lose it now. Don't crack up now._

"Whatever you've lost, _whoever_ you've lost..."

The others were staring at her, eyes wide, hoping he was getting through. Hoping he could break her.

_They know. All of them. They know who they work for._

She focused on that locked jaw, on those grinding teeth, on her fingers numb and white around the handgun.

_He didn't deserve to die._

"...this won't bring them back."

She smashed the Browning into his face. Anything to make him be quiet.

He cried out, clutching at his shattered nose, and then she hit him again, breaking his fingers. He slumped into the wall, just in time to take a blow to the temple. He started to slide to the floor, and caught her boot in his belly, hard enough to make him retch.

He screamed, spitting blood and curses, and grabbed for her, trying to make her stop.

She pulled the trigger. The bullet burst his right eye and turned his brain into a spray of red across the wall. He fell back and didn't move again.

_He just ... wouldn't stop._

The other technicians started to scream. One woman lost it completely and started running for the door.

Claire's arm snapped up. Her finger pulled tight on the trigger. And then the runner hit the floor, a bloody hole between her shoulder blades.

A guy in a baseball jersey leapt onto her arm, clumsy desperation turning his heroism into a death sentence. He curled around her hand and then the gun went off in his guts. He fell back onto the others.

She kept firing. She wanted them to stop screaming. She wanted them to stop pretending like they were innocent. Stop pretending they were human beings.

They were zombies already. No mind. No soul. Nothing of value. They died and the world kept turning. No one mourned. No one cried.

No one cried like she'd cried.

The gun snapped empty. She didn't register it at first. Just kept clicking the trigger until the world swam back into focus. She was breathing heavy, practically hyperventilating. She felt like she was caught in a head rush. Pins and needles were prickling her fingertips and racing along the inside of her skull.

She clawed for her bag, slid a fresh magazine out and swapped it for the empty.

Something moved in the pile against the wall. A girl, no older than her, wriggled out from under the bodies of her colleagues.

_But I'm not a girl anymore. I grew up. And he never got that chance._

Her hand was clamped across her midriff. From her fingers to her elbow, her hand was blood-slick, her blouse soaked. Gut shot.

Thoughts of a man - no, just a boy - lying naked on a cold, stone floor while he bled to death from a hole in his stomach crowded into her mind.

She aimed the Browning at the woman's head. Her hand was trembling. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and forced herself steady. Then, she pried back the hammer and fired.

The file transfer was done. She wiped the tears out of her eyes and tossed the flash drive into her bag, beside the security uniform she'd be wearing on her way out.

It would have taken Chris years to get a result like this. He was hamstrung, held back by an organisation that sat at Umbrella's heel, begging for scraps. She wasn't sure if he'd given up, or if he was still naïve enough to think warrants and best intentions would work.

Umbrella didn't play by the rules. She couldn't afford to either.

She'd learned so many things since Raccoon. About the company. About her "family". About herself.

She'd do what needed to be done - whatever needed to be done - no matter what.

-x-x-x-x-x-


	3. Leon: Finding the Way

The F.B.I were keeping their hand pretty close to their chest. At this point, all Leon - all _Scott_ - knew was that he was an asset, an ace in the hole. What kind of game they were playing, what kind of play they would make, was out of his hands.

All he could do was wait.

Part of him was starting to regret signing up. At least on the outside, he'd have been in control. He could have joined Claire and her brother, or just taken Sherry and gone to ground. But he didn't know where the Redfields were, and the little girl was in protective custody now, same as him.

They were all just part of the statistic caused by Raccoon City. The lost and disenfrancished plus four.

At least he was safe. The apartment where they'd set him up was a far cry from the one he'd rented while attending the academy. It was clean, spacious and fully furnished. He had a bed now, and not a mattress on the floor. He had a refrigerator, so he didn't have to live on takeout and tinned food.

Leon Kennedy had worked his ass off to become a cop. Scott Clark was the one enjoying the pay off.

He dropped the grocery bag on the counter, unpacked eggs, onions, butter, ham, and put a skillet on the stove. He scraped a fat wad of butter out of the tub with a knife and flicked it into the pan. Seconds passed. It melted into a bubbling drizzle that cascaded across the metal. He cracked the eggs, chopped the onions and ham, and threw it all in a bowl. Once it was thick and golden, he poured it onto the sizzling metal.

One omelette. The Scott Clark Special. Better than Kennedy had ever managed.

He carried it through to the living room and set it down on the coffee table between the two leather sofas, plunking the soda in his other hand beside it. Then he reached under his seat for the locked metal strongbox.

He had the key on a chain around his neck. He never took it off.

Once the lid was off, he started to unpack the components inside. He didn't know how many times he'd gone through this ritual, how many times he'd completed the collection, assembled them and hidden them away in another hidey hole in his "safe" apartment. There were enough guns in the walls by now he was getting worried someone would find them if he ever got robbed.

Then again, maybe the sight of a Glock 17 or a SIG P226 embedded in the drywall might make them wonder whose house they were stealing from.

This was going to be the pinnacle of his little armoury. A Beretta, chosen sidearm of the U.S. military. He slid the firing pin he'd acquired with his groceries out of his pocket and set it in its place next to the loose barrel. Now he had everything he needed to make it work.

He spooned a couple mouthfuls of omelette into his mouth, took a swig of Pepsi, and made a start.

He'd always had a morbid fascination with guns. One of the reasons he'd decided to become a cop in the first place was the sidearm. His dad had tanned his hide more than once for touching his piece, even though he'd just been pawing at it in the old man's holster.

Guns weren't toys. They were real. They were dangerous. And they were fascinating.

How could something he'd mimed with his fingers as a kid take a life? So quickly? So brutally?

The Beretta was a dream model. Effortless to construct. A couple of minutes, and a few squirts of oil, later and he was slotting the slide into place over the barrel.

He looked it over from every angle. His best work, if he did say so himself.

He hadn't fired at a living target before Raccoon City. But he'd put clean shots through the heads of so many wooden targets at the academy range he'd almost gotten sick of it.

Load, chamber, aim, fire. Rinse and repeat.

He slid a magazine into the new pistol and jerked back the slide. It was a comfortable habit to feel himself slipping back into. That self-taught weapon's discipline. It had kept him safe in the past. No reason why it wouldn't do the same for him now.

He targetted a piece of pointless modern art nailed to the wall, imagined punching a hole through it with hot lead. Another thing his dad would have tanned his hide for. One of Jim Kennedy's rules: never point a gun at anything you don't plan to shoot.

He popped the clip and set it back in the box.

He'd become a cop, just like his old man. He'd rolled into town, first day on the job, head full of rules, regulations and righteousness, and hit the ground running.

He'd clocked up twenty kills before he'd even reported in at the station. Every one had been a headshot. They had to be. Zombies didn't fall down holding their guts in like people did when they took a bullet to the stomach. They didn't go into shock from a shot in the shoulder or thigh. They just marched on, hungry, eyes blank, faces sagging, arms reaching...

He blinked, trying to shake the slideshow reel playing in his head. Each image was seared by a spark of muzzle flash into his brain.

But that was over now. No more zombies. No more monsters. And soon, no more Umbrella.

And where did that leave him? In hiding, where the company's vengeance couldn't find him. Under a rock, like an insect.

He smirked. Chris and Claire had it covered. They probably had Umbrella on the run by now.

He was a rookie cop, or had been. Fighting corrupt corporations wasn't his job. Never had been. His fight, his nightmare, was over. Time to dream.

What reason did he have to go back out there anyway?

_Revenge? For Ada..._

That name. That woman. Still so much a mystery, and yet...

Even knowing she'd been working for _them_ from the beginning, he felt like he knew her. Like he'd known the real her all along.

She'd wanted him to believe she was the agent, cold and hard, embittered. In the end, that had been the lie.

The concern on her face as she'd bandaged the hole in his shoulder. The sadness in her voice when she'd told him she _couldn't_ care about anyone but herself, like she regretted that she couldn't love him the way she wanted to. The way she'd died trying to save him from the monster, the Tyrant, that had chased them into the lab.

He remembered holding her, crushing his lips to hers, her body going slack in his arms as the life passed out of her. And he remembered screaming her name so loud it felt like he'd bring the world crashing down around them. Screaming until his lungs ached and his throat was raw and his eyes burned with tears.

Had he loved her? Had _she_ loved _him_?

_Do people throw their lives away to save someone they don't love? Does losing a stranger feel like you're being ripped in half?_

He tapped the gun against his temple. It barked. A bullet whistled past his face and punched into the ceiling. Hot brass burst from the breach and stung him on the lips.

He yelped. It tumbled from his fingers. Then the sofa toppled backwards and threw him off.

He kicked along the laminated wood until his back hit the wall. His heart was bouncing pinball crazy off his ribs. He put his head to the wall and just focused on _breathing_. His lungs ached with every inhalation. He felt like he was about to have a heart attack.

_Oh _Jesus_. I cleared it. Didn't I?_

He hadn't cleared it. There'd been a round sitting in the chamber. He'd popped the clip and left the goddamn bullet in. Stupid, careless, _dangerous_ rookie mistake.

_Bet your old man would be real proud to see you now. Sitting under your rock playing with your toys._

He stood up and righted the sofa.

_I thought I wanted this. I thought I wanted to escape, but..._

He looked at the gun, wisps of slate-grey smoke still tethered to its barrel.

_There's your wakeup call, son._

He couldn't do this. This _nothing _wasn't him.

_There's another way. They gave you another option._

He scooped up the Beretta, affording it the respect it deserved. He flicked the safety on and checked the chamber. Nothing. Just as he'd thought, but it paid to be sure. He set it back in its box and closed the lid.

He rubbed his palms into his face, still breathing slow and deliberate. That tingle of shock wasn't gone just yet.

He put his fingers to his lips. He could feel the burn where the casing had hit him.

It was like she was trying to remind him. That last kiss would stay with him, forever.

Tomorrow, he'd be Leon Kennedy again. Tomorrow, he'd take his life back.

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** It occurred to me that I'd never actually written a back story for Leon before. He's never been one of my favourites, in actuality, but I thought I needed to put something in the way of a history to him. That's what I've done here, in and amongst confronting Leon's trauma.

I figured that not all of these could be necessarily negative, although Leon's pathology does seem to be about running into dangerous situations in the name of a dead woman who kissed him once. I guess you could call that negative.

Enjoy. Let me know what you think.


	4. Chris: Crumbling

His right eyelid peeled open. He swallowed around the golfball-sized lump of morning nausea and licked dry lips with a drier tongue. The pain hadn't lessened with sleep, but he hadn't expected it to. This was rehab, paid leave to help him shake the battle scars and combat fatigue, not a vacation.

That didn't stop the frustration. Not even twenty-four hours in and he was hating this.

Sunlight fell across the floor and bed, slashed to golden ribbons by the blinds. It was too bright. Always was this time of morning.

He rolled his head and checked the clock on the bedside table. Turned out it wasn't morning after all. Red numbers blinked 12:34.

He groped for Jill, but all he could find were cold sheets. That wasn't surprising. She was a night owl by nature, but she didn't like to waste daylight when she had it. Even if she was gone now, she'd come back. He was lucky to have her around at all. They'd just been lucky that the agency owed her some leave too.

He was the early riser. Not today though.

He thumbed the crust off his left eye, but it didn't help. It was swollen shut. Not as bad as it had been yesterday, before they'd cut it, but he was still half-blind. Just a brush of his fingers made the entire right side of his face throb. It didn't help that his arm, from his knuckles up to his elbow, was still strapped up. The padding scratched his skin, made the bruising feel worse.

He sat up in bed, running his good hand through hair that was greasy with sweat. There was a fat lump at the back of his skull, and a dozen small lacerations gummed shut with dried blood. It was like touching a hill scarred by trenches and craters.

But that wasn't the worst of it. He swung his legs out from under the sheets and set his feet down on the floor. There, on his knee, was the brace that stopped him from stressing the joint while it healed. It'd never really recovered from his mission in the Antarctic, when he'd gone looking for Claire.

Not that he'd ever let it stop him.

Only it had stopped him. It all seemed so surreal now. One minute, chasing one of Umbrella's hired guns across rooftops in Rio. The next, tumbling to the street, crashing through awnings, washing lines and a stall selling Coke in the old glass bottles, before hitting concrete.

A dislocated knee. A fractured wrist. Twenty stitches in various cuts on the back of his head. Fifteen more in a cut on his bicep. A concussion. And a face so swollen it twisted his mouth into a frown.

The knee came first. He'd jumped from one rooftop to another, landed on his bum leg, and felt it give out beneath him, folding like a card tower. He'd hit the slates face-first and then slid backwards into freefall.

He'd still been conscious, and hurting, when Jill had reached the ground floor.

They hadn't caught the bastard either.

He massaged the skin through the skeletal frame of plastic and steel. Three bruise-black rectangles, all swollen with blood and pain. Didn't feel like it was getting any better. In fact, it felt like the brace was making things worse.

His foot was throbbing with needles. He couldn't walk right in the damn thing. Couldn't climb stairs, get into the shower or hold a stance. He felt crippled by it. How could it be helping his rehab?

He might be forced to wear the goddamn thing indefinitely.

The downtime was killing him. He'd known men who'd been put out by injuries who never got back in the game.

He pushed himself up and hobbled to the doorway. He limped past the mirror on the closet and caught a glimpse of a bedridden invalid with a python wrapped around a leg fat with swelling. He ignored it.

"Jill!" he called, propping himself up on the threshold of the living room, "Jill, you here?"

No answer. Maybe she'd gone out. She'd told him yesterday the refrigerator was empty.

He needed water. His tongue felt like a strip of sandpaper in his mouth. He thought about going back to bed and waiting for her to get home. But he wasn't a cripple. Injured, maybe. Shelved, for now. Never a cripple.

He staggered into the next room, wincing as a spasm of pain streaked up his left leg like a jolt of electricity. He gasped, clenching teeth, and took another step, ignoring the high-voltage sting that came every time he put his weight down on it.

"Shut up," he snarled at it, "just shut up!"

He'd only made it halfway across the room, to the couch, when he had to stop. It was frustrating, but every step took too much out of him to make it all the way.

When had crossing the living room become an ordeal?

He balled fists as he stood balanced on his right foot, steadying himself against the back of the chair. Part of him wanted to rain blows down on that swollen, black ball at the middle of his leg until it went away. But this wasn't a zombie or one of Umbrella's hitmen. There was nothing to fight. Not physically, anyway. This was his own body, turning on him, betraying him.

He wasn't going to let it win.

He pushed off from the couch and kept hobbling in the direction of the kitchen, trying to focus on his breathing, on clenching and unclenching his hands, on _anything_ but the pain.

This was pathetic. He was barely a match for a zombie like this, let alone a B.O.W, let alone one of the company's soldiers, let alone...

_Him? He'd just laugh. Smirk and say 'too easy'. And he'd be right..._

Somehow, he willed himself to the kitchen and collapsed across the counter, breathing hard. His leg was quivering with the exertion. Jill was going to give him hell for this when she got back, but it beat sitting on his ass all day.

He made his way to the refrigerator, using the worktop as a crutch, and grabbed a bottle of water from inside. He flicked open the sport cap and sucked in a half dozen quick mouthfuls, each one easing the raw feeling in his throat. He squeezed and sprayed a blast of cold water over his head. He'd need to take a shower, just as soon as the brace and wrist strap could come off.

_Whenever that'll be._

He ran a hand over his face, leaning against the front of the refrigerator. He pressed his bruised cheek to the cold metal casing. Felt good, if only for a few moments, to focus on something other than the leg.

But it couldn't last. He still had to get back to the bedroom. Or at least the couch.

He took a deep breath, and then started to make his way back, the bottle clasped in his good hand. It was tough. He had to steel himself for every time his foot met the hardwood floor, knowing he'd feel it from the tips of his toes all the way up to his hip. It was like stepping on knives.

He'd made it to the couch again when his entire leg buckled, calf, knee, thigh and all. A shudder of spasms raced up and hit him in the coccyx. It gave out under his weight and then he was falling. His arm was half-raised by the time he hit, his elbow cracking on the floor and his fingers going numb. The impact jerked the bottle out of his hand and sent it skidding away across the room. His head came an inch from bouncing off the wood.

He cried out, rolling onto his back and hugging his throbbing elbow to his stomach while the fingers trapped by the brace tried to massage feeling back into his leg.

"Son of a bitch," he grunted, through clenched teeth.

The front door opened. He heard grocery bags hitting the floor and then Jill was kneeling beside him, eyes wide. "Chris? What happened? Talk to me."

"Fell. Leg gave out. Landed on my goddamn arm."

"Oh, Chris..."

She put her hands to his shoulders, soft and reassuring. He flinched and she pulled back on reflex.

He sighed. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Let me help you back into bed."

"How...?"

He fell silent. She paused, brow creasing. He could feel himself breathing hard, as he fought to voice what was racing through his head. His eyes were starting to burn, but he held back.

"He's always getting stronger. And I'm ... I feel weaker than I've ever been. How do I beat him, Jill? How do I beat them? I can't even beat _this_."

Her face fell. For a moment, he thought she was going to start crying. He didn't want that. He never knew what to do when she cried. And if she started then he'd probably start too.

Instead, she pulled his head to her chest. He let himself collapse against her, feeling her fingers curl in his hair.

"It'll be okay," she whispered, "you'll be okay, Chris. It's early yet. You'll see."

He nodded. But somehow, he wasn't so sure.


	5. Rebecca: Plagued

Rebecca took a deep breath and hit the button. She squeezed her eyes and lips shut as the sterilisation blizzard raged around her. It whipped her hair into a flurry around her ears as she tried not to breathe. Her lungs started to burn.

And then the gust stopped. The green light blinked. Just in time to stop her eyes from clouding over with black freckles.

She blew out her breath, stepped out of the decontamination shower, out of the real world and into the sterile little bubble where she worked. The CDC's Special Contagion Unit.

"Special contagion". That was a joke. There was nothing special about the Tyrant virus. It was an infection, same as any other. There were symptoms, immunity, methods of destruction, options for treatment.

And there was a source. Even if that source was a laboratory owned by the Umbrella Corporation. Even if the American government refused to believe it.

Given time, she'd find it. The little barcode woven into the virus's genetic structure. A streak of eugenic graffiti proclaiming "Umbrella was here". Irrefutable proof of the meddling they'd done. Of the damage they'd caused and the lives they'd ended.

She knew it was there. A company full of narcissists and prima donnas. Of course it was there.

She'd find it.

_Some day. Not today._

She shuffled through the corridors, chin tucked into her chest, hands in her pockets. She dodged other bodies, colleagues who didn't spare her a second glance. That was good.

People looking at her made her nervous. The weight of their eyes piled onto her, suffocating. Her mind chattered. Why were they looking at her? What were they thinking? Who were they working for?

She didn't want attention. She avoided it. Better that way. Easier. She had to stay under their radar. She had to find the proof.

_Some day. Can't be today._

She slipped into the lab, raking her stubby fingernails down her arm from shoulder to elbow. She'd done her best to hide it in the hallway, but now...

She felt like she was on fire, an army of ants crawling under her skin, head to toe. Her face was swollen and puffy. Her eyes burned. There was something wrong with her. She knew it. Something terribly wrong.

Wade glanced up as she sidled towards his desk.

So she'd indulged herself. She'd let herself have one friend. Chris couldn't do it alone. He had Jill. She needed someone too. That someone was Wade.

He pushed himself back from his monitor, grinning and nudging his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose. "What's up, Becks?"

His face fell the moment he looked at her.

"You okay?"

She nodded, clawing at her shoulder through her tee. "Y-yeah, f-fine."

"You're not supposed to be here today," he said, leaning forward in his seat, "you want to cut the bull and tell me what's going on?"

"I..." she wheezed.

She swallowed hard. A swell of vomit gurgled back down into her stomach. When had it become so difficult so speak?

"I n-need you t-to draw some blood and r-run a test for m-me..."

His eyes widened as she spoke. He cut her off, rising out of his chair, before she could finish. She shrank back and bumped into another desk. Her desk

"Whoa, whoa, what do you mean run a test? A test for what?"

"I th-think I might be in..."

Her voice failed. Her mind spat a machinegun volley of obscenities at her in Chris's voice. He'd never said a word against her, in reality, but he was everything she'd never been able to be. And now her harshest critic, even if he'd never know it.

"Infected."

She squeaked the word. Pathetic.

This time it was Wade's turn to back off, eyes wide. She'd said the CDC's ultimate dirty word. In the SCU it was sacrilege, like wishing the devil into your own house.

"_What?_ Becks, how did this happen? Did you rip your haz-mat suit or...?"

She shook her head. "No."

"...a needle stick or...?"

"No."

"...did you spill any acids?"

"N-no. Nothing like that. I'm j-just."

He lunged for her, grabbing her wrist as her nails kept working the skin at the top of her arm. "Becks!"

She flinched. Her fingertips were bloody. There was a warm patch spreading at her shoulder, sticking her shirt to her flesh. She'd opened one of her scabs. She was covered in them. Why couldn't she stop itching?

"I'll take your blood," he told her, "but you have to stop. You're cutting yourself to pieces."

"I c-can't help it." She'd been crying all day. Her wells had run dry. But emotion choked her all the same.

"Please. Look, every time you scratch, you could be spraying infected cells all over the room. Just... Put your hands in your pockets or something."

She nodded dumbly. What if she'd spread it all over the city just coming in? She should have called. Should have let them know she was contagious so they could set up a quarantine around her apartment. Why hadn't she considered that eventuality?

_Tired. Not thinking straight._

_Couldn't sleep last night.__ Slept the night before though._

_No. Night before that._

_No excuse._

_Thoughtless. Stupid. Reckless. Could have killed everyone._

Wade tucked a chair into the backs of her knees. They buckled and she slid into the seat. His hands fastened a strap around her forearm. The needle prick came and went. She didn't flinch, didn't stop staring at the wall, past the wall, through the wall, at nothing.

She was dead. They'd killed her. She'd come close. They knew how close. They controlled this place, had a copy of all her reports, all her results. She hadn't let on, but they'd know what she was looking for. And they'd know better than she would how close she'd come.

So they'd stopped her. Killed her. Assassination by virus. Ironic. The smoking gun, the nail in Umbrella's coffin, that she'd been looking for all this time was going to kill her, not them.

Wade had left the room. Her fingers grazed the flesh on her left arm. It tingled. She clenched fists, then rammed those fists into her pockets.

Where was he? When was he coming back?

_Please don't say they got __him too._

And then he was back, clutching a sheaf of paper from one of the printers across the hall. How long had he been away? Could he have run the test already?

She flicked her tongue across her lips. Her mouth tasted sour. Had she ... fallen asleep?

"Back," he said, dragging his chair over in front of her and dropping into it, "you're clean."

He held up the printout. It was there, in black and white. It even had her name on it. The computer had identified her from the sample she had on record.

_Low white count. __Anaemic. But no markers for viral infection of any kind. Clean as the proverbial whistle._

She stared at the results, silent, but her mind was reeling, racing, screaming. It was all just white noise. All the crying, all the worry, all the questions. Suddenly, it was all _nothing_. She'd been wrong. All wrong. Somehow that made it all worse.

_How can I be clean? I feel... I feel so..._

"Rebecca," Wade said. He never called her that. The paper had disappeared. His face was there instead. "Are you okay?"

_I wasn't close. They don't care about me. I'm nothing to them. I'm nothing..._

"Rebecca?"

The lump in her throat swelled and rose to her mouth, then burst out through her lips in a shaky sob. She clapped her hands over her face as her wells found unknown depths and filled her burning eyes with salt water. She started trembling. The tremors shook the waiting wail out of her.

Wade's arms enfolded her. She shuddered, revolted. She didn't want to be touched. Didn't want to be held. But she couldn't push him off. Couldn't do anything but wait.

Wait for the sobbing and shaking to end, so that she could go home and steep in her misery and isolation and worthlessness, alone.

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** I've based a good deal of Rebecca's personality on how she behaves in RED, and this was how I envisioned her post-ordeal. Essentially a gibbering, nervous wreck. The hypochondriac idea was one that I'd had for Rebecca for a long time, but the blame for that too has to fall squarely on Shakahnna's shoulders, for writing a definitive Rebecca.

I think people forget that not everyone can be a hero, and Rebecca should always only ever be a supporting character. RE0 was just plain wrong.

Thanks go to CJJS, Ruingaraf, and n8tivegurl for being so supportive of this project and leaving such thoughtful reviews. You most of all Colin. And, as always, to my beta and partner in all things, the Shak.


	6. Billy: The Rattlesnake

He spotted another exit as he reached the end of the canned goods aisle. That made three, one at the front, one through the loading bay, and now a fire escape at the back. At a push, he could smash the front window, make a quick escape if the others were blocked.

The store only seemed to have two guards. Nothing to get too concerned about. But they could slow him down long enough for the real threat to catch him up.

He tossed a few cans into his basket. Vegetables and meat mostly. Some fruit in syrup for dessert. He never bought more than he could carry, and tried to make as few stops as possible. He'd eat well for a few nights, go hungry a few others. Compared with MRE's, it was heaven.

His jaw was itching, but the mask of anonymity a hedge of facial hair gave him felt good, even if it was counter to everything he'd been taught in the Rangers.

It reminded him too much of Africa. A month spent scrabbling around in that God-forsaken jungle, nothing sharper than a Leatherman in his pack. And shaving with a glorified Swiss Army knife was easier said than done.

He picked up a bottle of Jack on his way to the checkout. Or imitation Jack. The dog-eared bills in his pocket wouldn't have stretched to the real thing.

It didn't matter anyway. One brand of paint thinner was as good as any other, so long as it lit a fire in his belly and let him forget about the numbness in his fingers and toes. He had a couple of cigarettes left too. One of those tonight, a swig of whiskey, and whichever gutter he crawled into would hold him like his mother's arms till morning.

He dumped his purchases on the counter, weathering the usual dirty looks from the patrons and the girl behind it. Same old story.

He couldn't really blame them. Who wanted someone who stank of cigarette smoke and stale sweat standing in their breathing space? He looked like any other bum. Smelled like it too. Aroused the same kind of suspicion when he was standing in the liquor aisle.

But the moment they saw the colour of his money, gave him his bag, and told him to "have a nice day", they forgot him. Transients were just that. Transient. A flicker in the memory. Not worth remembering. Not worth telling anyone about.

No one ever suspected a bum of having served his country. No one suspected a bum of standing for something, now or before.

And they never accused a bum of knowing too much.

He zoned out while the cans made their journey from basket to paper bag, sounding off in identical voices as they hit the scanner's glass plate. The price brought him back to reality with a bump.

_Kinda steep, _he thought, and then he remembered the whiskey.

He counted the bills out of his wallet, and the girl swept them into the till, trying not to touch them. Short-haired girl. Looked like her. Didn't act like her though. Jaw grinding on gum. Hair dye, red and black, with colourless roots showing. None of her class. None of her smarts. A dull-eyed shop zombie.

_Gotta stop checking out the girls with short hair. That's over. She wouldn't even be a girl these days. If she survived._

She dropped the change into his hand, and wasn't too careful about it either. He let the slight pass and slipped the coins into his wallet, then set it down at the end of the counter so he could load his pack up with cans.

The girl let out an irritated sigh.

_And this one's nothing like her._

He slung his rucksack and scrunched the paper bag, tossing it into a waste bin behind the counter. He was feeling heavy. That was good. Heavy meant he could keep walking for a few more days.

It was Autumn. Time to start heading south. He'd winter in California, maybe Nevada. Do a couple of odd jobs on the way, so long as the folks out there didn't ask too many questions.

He glanced back along the counter. One of the guards was heading his way. He acted like he hadn't noticed and started for the door.

_Twenty metres..._

He never let himself get stopped. He never let his ID fall into their hands, fake or not. He knew from experience that they had agents everywhere, in every organisation. And if he was chased, he could always ditch the bag. It didn't matter if he went a day or two without eating. He'd lived through worse.

_Fifteen metres..._

The chiller cabinet showed him the store behind him in a flash of polished glass and metal. The guard was still chasing him. And it looked like he was putting on speed.

His pulse quickened. He kept an even pace. No need to let the guy know he was in a hurry. With any luck, he could slip out of the store before he tried to stop him.

_Ten metres..._

"Excuse me, sir."

Maybe it was time to cut and run, just get out. He wouldn't be passing this way again anyway. Better to speed up than slow down. All it took was one call. One minute he'd be standing at the checkout answering pointless questions. Then the cops would show and drag him downtown because of some "suspect fitting the description" or because he was intoxicated or disturbing the peace or being otherwise undesirable.

Next thing he knew, he'd be under a black hood, in a truck to whatever shit hole Umbrella was using to dump its bodies these days. And he'd been in that boat before.

_Sitting in a jeep, waiting to hang. I'm not going out like that. I'm not dying for someone else's crimes. Never! Five metres..._

A hand clapped down on his shoulder.

"Sir, you-"

His hand snapped out, caught a thin wrist, twisted it away. He spun, his feet slipping into a position that was too familiar. His palm hit something solid and a choked retch filled his ears. Then, his heel caught the man's ankle and they sailed down to the floor with him on top. His fist came down, again and again and...

_...again. His knife arm was slick with blood, his fingers sticky around the handle. The thing let out a gurgle that bubbled out of the gaping hole of its mouth. His knuckles turned white around the fistful of its battered suit jacket, holding it up as his arm pistoned back and forth, back and forth. Blood soaked his pants. Bone splintered and rattled across the floor like misshapen dice._

_Its lips pulled back over bloody teeth, like it was smiling. He stuck the blade through its jaw, pinning its tongue. The grin stayed._

_His fist shattered its eye socket, punched in its nose, knocked its mandible loose. The grin fell lopsided and lost a couple of teeth._

_Someone screamed._

_Rebecca, standing behind him, nursing the bruise on her shoulder where it had grabbed her, eyes wide with something that looked like fear. Didn't make any sense. The thing was dead. She didn't need to be scared anymore._

_She hadn't screamed. She'd said something. Something he hadn't heard._

"_Billy," she breathed, voice trembling, "stop. Please."_

It was the clerk who'd screamed. It was the security guard looking up at him with his face a blood-slick mass of purple, eye swollen shut, nose broken, jaw hanging on a popped hinge. No Rebecca. No zombie.

The guy was holding his wallet. He'd forgotten to pick it up again after loading his pack. Must have left it on the counter.

There wasn't any time to feel shame. No time to apologise. A couple of the patrons had cell phones out and dialling.

He grabbed the wallet and bolted.

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** Not a huge fan of Lieutenant Coen. I think he could have been greatly improved with a few cosmetic modifications and a personality, but I was really disappointed that I didn't get to play as the Bravo Team in RE0, so that was an instant turn-off. I'm fond of this chapter though, and I think that Chris's chapter was really a turning point for me in this series.

Thanks to CJJS, Sincerity and n8tivegurl for buoying up my ego with reviews, and to the newcomer Moonfawn for starting at the beginning. Also, thanks as always to the lovely Shakahnna, who makes all of this possible. She is the main reason you have enjoyed this as much as you have.


	7. Barry: Family Man

If there was an image for tranquillity, then this was it.

The lake yawned out before him, pristine azure and still as glass. The sky was cold blue, painted with feathery white wisps of cirrus. It wasn't dusk yet, but the noon warmth was starting to dissipate and the sun hung low over the horizon. A cool breeze drifted in off the mountains, carrying with it the scent of pine. Not the smell you got from those cardboard trees people hung on their rear-views either. Something real and earthy. Refreshing.

_Wasted on you, old man._

His best and oldest friends were fighting corruption half a world away, and he was here, in hiding. They'd told him he belonged with his family, as a husband and a father, not in the trenches. He knew that war was a young man's game. Even the quiet kind. But as he'd watched them climb aboard that plane and fly out of his life, it had felt like he'd betrayed them all over again.

It was hard to find peace when you felt so torn.

He rocked back in his seat on the porch, listening to Moira and Polly playing just beyond the tree line. They always seemed to find something new to keep themselves entertained. He didn't really mind what they did, so long as he could hear them giggling. So long as he knew they were there.

Sarah stepped out of the lodge and let the screen door bang shut behind her. She set a bottle of water and a soda on the table beside his Smith & Wesson. Then he felt her hands on his shoulders.

"I was thinking," she said, working her thumbs into the knots in his upper back, "maybe the girls would like to spend the weekend at the Harrisons' lodge. They've asked a couple of times now, and it's been a long, long time since they visited friends."

He was shaking his head, before she'd even finished. "That's not a good idea. I don't want to take any unnecessary risks. Besides, doesn't Bob Harrison ship chemicals for the Company?"

She sighed, but kept up the massage around his neck. "I guess you're right."

It took him a few moments to realise what he'd missed.

_We haven't had a night alone in a long, long time either._

He took her hand and touched his lips to the back. She circled him and lowered herself into his lap, draping an arm around his neck, then kissed him on the forehead.

She smiled and tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. It was one of those habitual motions people tended to carry with them. He'd always loved it when she did that. It reminded him of High School and the Prom and all those moments they had shared between then and now.

Everything she'd had back then, she still had and more. It had survived two children and more than thirty years of worrying if her cop husband was coming home night after night. She'd aged with all the grace he'd expected when they'd been kids themselves.

If there was a problem with their marriage, it was him. Life had wrung the energy out of him, turned him grey and weary before his time. He'd taken early retirement to try and recapture the years he'd lost, just in time to be dragged into the disaster in Raccoon.

It seemed like he could never give her the break she deserved.

His ears twitched. Not at a noise. At the absence of it.

_The girls... Where...?_

Polly started calling for them, her voice high and strident. Sarah leapt to her feet and started running towards the trees. He paused just long enough to grab the S&W and then he was following her.

He'd broken out in a cold sweat. His fingers felt numb around the revolver's grip. The adrenaline shakes were setting in, the immunity he'd built up during his three decades on the force dulled by a handful of years on the shelf.

_Oh God, what happened? Be okay, girls. Please be okay._

He weaved between a cluster of thick trunks, spreading branches so tangled overhead they smothered out the dying sunlight. The forest floor was spongy with needles and cones. He shot past the hollowed out trunk where the girls had ambushed him during a hike one weekend and the spot where Moira had found the injured bird. It was all a blur.

He found Sarah kneeling next to Polly, arms wrapped around her. He could see a streak in the dirt from the top of the hill down to the bottom. She'd fallen. Her dress and jacket were covered in dead leaves and she'd grazed her knees. She was crying, probably because the tumble had shaken her up.

"Where's Moira?" he asked.

Sarah looked up at him, surprised.

He dropped onto his knees next to them and put his hand to Polly's shoulder. "Polly, where's your sister?"

She sniffed and pointed to the top of the hill. His stomach lurched. He'd always told them not to go this far on their own. He couldn't see or hear them from the lodge out here.

He didn't wait. He scrambled up the hill, heart hammering, still clutching his pistol.

Hadn't she noticed that her sister had fallen? Why hadn't she come back for her? Maybe she couldn't. Maybe she'd fallen too. Worse than Polly had. Or maybe...

He'd been hearing rumours for years. Grizzlies, roaming these woods. He'd always thought it was nonsense, but... If there was truth in it... If Moira had stumbled across them...

_What if it's the Company? What if it's Umbrella? What if they've finally caught up with me? With us? What would they do to her?_

"_Moira!_" he yelled, panting as he clawed his way to the top of the hill, "_Moira!_"

It was hard to catch his breath. He didn't run much these days. There was never really a need for it. But it wasn't like he'd spent the last few years sitting on his ass watching football and drinking beer, like some ex-cops he knew.

The gauzy feeling in his lungs. The way his breath seemed to rattle in his throat. He hadn't felt like that in a long time.

He reached the crest, but he couldn't see any sign of Moira, or any clues to which direction she'd gone in. He tried to suck air into his lungs so that he could call for her again, but all he could manage was a gasp.

He barrelled on, hoping, praying that she was okay, wherever she was. He was running so fast he almost ran right past it.

It was caught on a branch, fluttering in the breeze, a pink streak against the mottled green of the trees all around. The ribbon from Moira's hair.

He snatched it from where it was anchored. For a moment, all he could do was stand and stare at it. What did it mean? She always wore a ribbon. She'd pick hiking boots over shoes, and jeans over a skirt, any day, but the ribbon was a must.

He jammed it into his pocket and ran into the wind, hoping he'd find her in that direction. Hoping she'd dropped the ribbon or the breeze had pulled it out of her hair.

He was heading towards the lake again. It covered whole acres out here, filling the bottom of a natural bowl between the mountains. A lot of guys like him had lodges along the bank, but most of them were only there during vacation time. He was the only one in this area whose cabin was full all year round.

He didn't like cities. He'd had all he could stomach of them after Raccoon. Sarah had only just managed to convince him to let the kids attend school in the town at the head of the valley.

He caught a glimpse of navy blue through the trees. Moira's battered jacket, the one with the patch of brown fabric on the back, hanging on a branch. She'd ripped it while they'd been hiking and begged her mother to sew it up, so that she could keep wearing it. She loved it because the hole in the pocket was big enough for her to keep a bag of M&M's in the lining.

"Moira!" he called, starting to slow when he realised that she was standing at the water's edge.

She didn't turn around. As he watched, she stooped and picked something up from the ground. Then, she pitched it across the water. He watched the stone skim, bouncing once, twice, three times, and then vanishing beneath the surface.

Just like he'd showed her.

She rolled her sleeves up and went to grab another stone.

"Moira," he said.

She started. "Dad? What are you doing up here?"

Relief flushed through him. She was fine. She'd just wandered off, exploring, just like her old man. There was nothing to worry about. She hadn't fallen. There was no bear. And no one from the Company. Everything was fine.

The revolver slipped out of his hand and thumped into the dirt. He dropped onto his knees in front of her and grabbed her by the upper arms. She was taller than him when he was like this. She was growing more and more with every passing year. Pretty soon, she wouldn't be his little girl anymore.

"Moira, don't you ever run off like that again, you hear me?"

"Dad, I..."

"I don't want to hear any excuses, young lady. Your sister fell down back there. What if she'd gotten hurt?"

"Dad..."

"And what if something had happened to _you_? I've told you again and again not to wander too far from the cabin. These woods can be dangerous. There could be bears out here and God only knows what else."

_You know what else, old man._

"Dad..."

"You need to stay where I can see you. You need to stay where I can _protect_ you. Do you know what it would do to your mother and me if _anything _happened to you?"

"_You're hurting me!_"

The words stung like a slap in the face. He let her go. Four streaks of bruising marred the faint tan of her skin on each arm. His fingers.

The apology stuck in his throat as he looked, first at her, then at his hands, then back at her. Her eyes filled with tears, her lower lip trembling, and then she ran away from him. He watched her go, watched her smother her face into her mother's shoulder. Sarah was staring at him, Polly clinging to her waist. She wrapped an arm around Moira's shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. Then, she led the girls away, back to the lodge.

And he knelt on the bank, whispering useless apologies, until he had the strength to climb to his feet, numb with cold, and follow them. By then, it was already dark.

-x-x-x-x-x-

**A/N:** Much as I'm glad Billy's chapter got such a great reception, I am more pleased with this one. I really love Barry, possibly because of working with him at length in the Untold Story. I suppose you could call this chapter an unofficial epilogue to TUS, except that TUS will be getting a chapter of its own eventually.

Some of this was inspired by certain thoughts on family life that appeared in CJJS's "A Corrupted Summer", which I recommend. Hey, C, is this what Canada looks like? The M&M's reference is because we've been watching Supernatural recently.

Many thanks to the wonderful Shakahnna for being so helpful in my work. Writing is a passion, and there is nothing more wonderful than a partner who will be passionate about your passions.


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